Saturday, January 25, 2014

A petition has been set up on Change.org in support of
Maajid Nawaz, the Liberal Democrat Prospective Parliamentary Candidate
for Hampstead and Killburn, who posted an innocuous 'Jesus and Mo'
cartoon on his Twitter timeline and stated that he, as a Muslim, was not
offended by the content.

His tweet followed a BBC
Big Questions programme in which the cartoons were discussed and Maajid
Nawaz was included as a studio guest.

The cartoon depicts Jesus and Mo
saying 'Hey' and 'How ya doin'" to each other.

Maajid
is the co-founder and chair of the anti-extremism think tank Quilliam,
and co-founder of Khudi, a Pakistan based social movement campaigning to
entrench democratic culture among the nation's youth.

Following
his tweet on 12 January, Mohammed Shafiq of the Ramadhan Foundation,
Muslim commentator Mo Ansar and Bradford Respect MP George Galloway all
took to Twitter calling for calling for Maajid Nawaz to be ousted from
the post of the Liberal Democrats' PPC.

A petition was then set up
calling on Nick Clegg to remove Nawaz.

A counter petition has now been set up calling on the Liberal Democrats to give Nawaz their full support.

Organisers
of the petition said: "Islamists and political opponents have mounted a
campaign against Maajid Nawaz, resulting in numerous threats to his
life. We note that this campaign, rather than being based on legitimate
concerns of Muslims, is a political campaign which is being spear-headed
by a group of Muslim reactionaries with a track record of promoting
extremism. They are seeking to use Muslim communities in order to whip
up hatred against a liberal and secular Muslims. We are concerned that
this campaign will also be used by anti-Muslim extremists as evidence of
Muslim intolerance and incompatibility with liberal values which could,
in turn, fuel anti-Muslim bigotry."

Stephen Evans,
campaigns manager at the National Secular Society said: "We simply can't
have a climate where politicians are intimidated into silence by people
who believe they have a right not to have their religious sensibilities
offended. Anything other than complete Liberal Democrat support for
Maajid could have a very chilling effect on free speech in this
country."